Rat bastards

When last we left our Lone Wolf cub, he was facing a band of fell brethren blocking his path. We decided to draw our weapons and confront the savages, but note that they didn't tell us ahead of time the main guy looked like this:

Convenient, no? I'm pretty sure we're cowardly enough that we'd have run if we knew we were faced with Skeletor in drag. I mean, I know I would.

So Rhygast is blocking sorcerous blasts with a shield Jedi-style while we ... trip and fall into the bushes. Lucky that, as my Kai Discipline of Future Forecasting predicts we've got a 100% chance of crapping ourselves, and what better place than a bush for that?

It's lucky that "Strength and steel" will not avail us here, because we are fresh out of both. We are fully stocked on "Lying stunned in a ditch while others die for us" and "spaghetti spine", however. Lead on, Rhygar!

Let's take a moment here to review. Our big approach so far is to try to get Rhygar to fight our battle for us. When that failed, we chunked his remaining men at arms in the path of our enemies to buy us time to run away. Heroism! Now, having run out of cannon fodder, we return to our original plan of ... throwing Rhygar into the path of the oncoming doom while we run away into a metaphorical womb. We just get more and more noble, don't we? I wonder if we can ask Rhygar for a loan before we dash off, promising to pay it back next time we bump into him. No?

On a mechanical level, this is one of those times when these "Choose Your Own Adventure" books really cheese me off, since this is the first I've heard of a Magic Spear. Did we miss it at a shop? Did we have a chance to fight something that would've given it to us but instead chose to run away (like that would ever happen!)?

No. It turns out waaaaay back when we first entered the forest we had a choice to go left or right. Guess which way the Spear was? That's right, the way we did not go. A totally meaningless, random choice at a completely innocuous moment results in Total Party Kill. Awesome.

The guys who put the book up on the web made some editorial decisions that cleaned up the decision point, which is nice. Now the meaningless earlier choice lets us condemn Rhygar to death without having to worry about having the spear or not. Win!

Look how cute! I wonder if their rodent-like noses can smell our complete amorality and ruthlessness. We better hope not.

Luckily we have the Kai Discipline of Animal Kinship -- which we've only used to talk to rodents, implying we're directly related to a rat, appropriately enough -- so off we go.

Wait, these things are nudnics? Isn't that a variation of "nudnik", which means "A pestering, nagging, or irritating person; a bore"? Awesome. The good times they are a-rollin'!

So we have a decision to make, which you are Constitutionally obliged to defend in the comments:

21 Responses to Rat bastards

I say we follow the harmless little mouseman. We speak his language, after all. What’s the worst that could- no, no I’m not going to finish asking that after all. Our karmic retribution hangs in the balance, and having Wolf’s face eaten by rat-people is not a fate I’d like to see this adventure end in. ‘Nuff said.

Of course the one time we choose to stand and fight, it’s the wrong time. And I love how they don’t bring up the magical spear that can actually hurt these things until after we fled. Maybe we can get a Kai Discipline of Avoiding Bad Decisions, so we make it out of this thing alive.

I say follow it. What’s the worst that could happen apart from a whole swarm of them somehow managing to steal all of our stuff? But, not to worry, because we can talk them out of it.
Besides, I get the feeling that if we carry on, we’ll encounter something horrible and die or something.

I have a theory…that Worf and Myro have some kind of telepathic(?) link that means they always agree with each other, with a side effect of people always getting them mixed up. On second thoughts, they could be twins…

Good heavens, we can’t keep being oblivious to the chance for adventure. This is, after all, a “Choose your own adventure book,” not a “Choose yet another way in which you are a contemptible coward book.” Therefore, after the nudnik, khevre! And if we die? Abi gezunt!

At this point, I don’t care much. Rhygar was a better choice for this mission than us. Did our employers (and frankly, I’ve forgotten who the hell they were) hire us because they knew we’d avoid any adventure on the way and just find the whatzis?
Anyway, Wolfie is such a putz that I just wouldn’t be that sorry to see him with a Noodnic cage strapped to his face. Since either choice stands an equal chance of getting us killed, far be it from me to swarm against the rat tide.

I knew our days were numbered the moment we took the wrong turn (because when I played through this, I made the same mistake). It’s a horrible, long-winded way to die, playing all the way through the story, getting your hopes up, and then being told you’re going to die because you went the wrong way ages ago.

However, having said that, I didn’t have Animal Kinship, so perhaps this is a way of getting an identical magical spear? Follow Nude Nick, I say!

Let’s see… we’re following the little rat into his warrens, where not only will we be outnumbered hundreds to one, but we’ll also have no room to maneuver, just so we can get the superfluous information that the tunnels are empty because the Bad Guys have already cleaned them out? Why? Oh, well, the sooner we die, the sooner we can proceed to the next futile quest, with the next terminal idiot of a character!